Audeamus
by Cenerea
Summary: There was once a legend - and probably there still is. People murmur: she was great; greater than any threat the Marines had experienced. She was a swordsman, not a human. And sailors whisper: did she meet the current greatest? Thus a story is created and immediately hushed: the risk is too high. No one, though, could ever picture just how far back this story goes. "Let us dare."


_**Author's note:**_

_Hello everyone, I'm Cenerea and the very first thing I would like you to know about me is that English is not my first language. The reasons behind writing this story do not lie only in a deep passion for the hereby represented characters and for the art of creative writing in general, but also in my desire to improve my language skills. I've been a silent reader for quite a long time now, and the caliber of some of the stories published on this website often discouraged my own undertaking of this "creative challenge," all too conscious that their level of pure beauty would simply be unattainable for me. All this is to say two things: (1) all constructive criticism on how I can improve my language and diction is very welcome; (2) please excuse the lack of originality that the following story may present. It is my first attempt at an extended, creative piece in English, but I hope it will have at least _some_ remote hint of success. One note on updates: as I am currently an university student, updates will be random and irregular._

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own any of the characters belonging to the One Piece universe; they are all Oda's property. However, I do retain copyright rights over characters of my own individual creation._

**_I dedicate this story to three important people in my life. They will know who they are. Thank you for being such amazing people._**

_That said, I hope you will enjoy your stay._

_- Cenerea  
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><p><strong>Audeamus<strong>

_Prologue: Whisper_

A whisper is nothing more than air softly blown into words. Its breath gently caresses your ear as lips are tensed and pressed together into sound. Warmness kisses the thin cartilage, and you wish it would never stop. Words subtly wedge their way across the folds of your consciousness, until they nestle down somewhere they will not be disturbed. So do whispers implant ideas: a warm touch, a fleeting pleasure – an eroding longing to fill the new emptiness.

The moment those foreign lips leave your ear coldness hits it quietly but abruptly. A moment of disorientation is followed by one of wonder at the experience that has just ended. The words thus shift in their nest and nudge you to ask what more there is to say – but for the briefest instant you hesitate. You know how curiosity killed many more men than cats. But of no use is the cold air that is showered upon your skin by a light breeze: the call back to sanity is not heeded, and craving for the hot guilty pleasure to lull your senses once again into ephemeral bliss you draw your breath and whisper back— a plea.

So do whispers hold power. Like fleas, they anchor their invisible bodies to the human soul, drain the latter of its life force and slowly infest it with obsession – the obsession for _more_. It is a very lucid feeling, one that exploits your sanity over and beyond its natural limits. You want a story – one that has been forbidden; one that, having lost its right to be, took shelter in clandestine whispers, shifting shape from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth. What you obtain are disjointed fragments whose murmuring is not harmonized. Your pleasure lies in interpreting this cacophony of low voices and hot breaths, in selecting the most dissonant of all, and in setting these in a melody to which only you will have access. Your own private hymn of bliss— and you will know something more than all the others you have met so far. A willing succubus to your own dark passions, you drag your body anywhere a new whisper originates. And this is how this story begins.

An utterance that is spelt on paper does not hold the creative power of a whisper, but it entices those nestled words to fidget uncomfortably in their fold, triggering the now familiar mechanism of mania and desire. A letter found under your door is enough to prompt your feet towards the newly fixed destination: an anonymous bar in a poorly-lit backstreet. The air is damp; you bury your mouth and nose in the folds of your black scarf and you thrust your hands in the pockets of your dark coat as your steps softly splash and squish their way towards the entrance. You take a moment to gaze up to the dull insignia, feeling that insignificant but crucial moment of hesitation nudging at your good sense. But as your condensed breath puffs out of your mouth in small clouds and then disappears in the night, so does that moment dissipate into nothingness. The door is pushed open with a prolonged and low creak.

Bar music is playing too loudly in a room with poor acoustics. The light is a deep orange or golden shade that illuminates the moist surfaces of the long, worn wooden tables and effectively keeps hidden in darkness the corners of the room. It is in fact too dark to distinguish the color of the wallpaper – maybe a dark green? – but your final destination is too near to allow any sort of distraction. Thus you ignore the homely chatter of sailors, their drunken slurs and coarse laughter, the raised eyebrow of the curious bartender and his hand perpetually wiping a glass clean with a white cloth— thus you walk straight towards the dark table set apart in a corner of the stuffy room, close to a stained glass of indistinguishable color, keeping your eyes trained on the almost invisible figure of a small, pudgy man wrapped in a black coat silently staring down his untouched glass of ale as he waits. This man is a man with a story: it is resting within his body, safe in its silent slumber, but just as quietly craving to be released in a low flow of hushed words. You had been waiting your entire life for this.

Soundlessly you approach him, stand by him; he raises his head and glances at you with a half surprised, half disappointed grimace on his battered face. "Ah, there you are," he remarks unimpressed as he lowers his tiny gray eyes on his glass once again. You calmly sit down on the small sofa across the table, opposite to where he has been seating for all eternity, too eager to steal a new whisper away from him to be bothered by his rough manners. The old man – you can't clearly see his face due to the poor light, but you suppose he is quite advanced in age by his raucous low voice – gestures vaguely to the bartender by half-raising his left hand, index and middle finger slightly raised, and the addressee reluctantly turns to the shelves behind him. You place your own hands on the sticky surface of the table, folding them together in a ball. Impatience is beginning to grow within the depths of your chest as a pool of boiling water: each popping bubble brings you one small step closer to loosing sanity.

Finally, with a quick, fluid motion of his hand and arm, perfected throughout the many years spent in shabby bars across the world, the man takes a swig from his glass; sighs – you detect the smell of beer in his breath from where you are sitting and suppress a wince – and thus utters: "I thought you would never come."


End file.
